


London, 1941

by ivory_leigh



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Falling In Love, Happy Ending, I'm Bad At Titles, M/M, Pining, Suppressing emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 02:15:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19122538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivory_leigh/pseuds/ivory_leigh
Summary: Aziraphale did not, in fact, realize he was in love with Crowley that night in the ruined church. No, he had already realized it years before, decades before, standing in St. James’s Park and holding a little slip of paper in his hands.





	London, 1941

Contrary to what a certain demon might tell you, Aziraphale did not, in fact, realize he was in love with Crowley that night in the ruined church. No, he had already realized it years before, decades before, standing in St. James’s Park and holding a little slip of paper in his hands. _Holy water,_ it said. _For if they find me. For if it all goes wrong._ Aziraphale had felt the hot, white pain of grief in his throat, felt the anger, the fear, the Punic faith of a world that had turned out nothing like it was supposed to, and he knew.

That was what Crowley always said, wasn’t it? He hadn’t so much fallen as he had sauntered vaguely downward, each transgression just a little easier, a little quicker, until he found himself standing at the wrought iron gates of hell?

Aziraphale pitched the damned note into the water, and then he went home. He fell asleep for the first time in centuries, dreamt of voices screaming and mouths with too many teeth, woke up in a cold sweat and decided to get stupendously drunk instead. He spent the next two weeks in a haze of red wine and old poetry, crying quietly and ignoring every knock at the door.

He hadn’t meant to fall.

Certainly not for a demon, not for the only thing God had ever pointed to and said _don’t touch_ —but it had all happened so slowly, and then so fast.

Aziraphale did not speak to Crowley again for seventy nine years. He continued to ignore the knocks at the door, ignored the letters that came addressed to every pseudonym he’d ever borne, ignored the notes slipped under his mat that said things like _I’m sorry_ and _please forgive me_ and _you know I don’t even need you._ Aziraphale burned them all in the fireplace, and after a while, they stopped. It was better this way, Aziraphale decided, pretending his chest didn’t ache with the emptiness. Demons couldn’t love. It simply wasn’t possible. Deep down, at their core, they were inherently selfish, gluttonous, greedy, wrathful. They embodied every sin, gave shape to every vice. They could be friends with angels, but they could not love them.

And Aziraphale… Aziraphale wanted to be loved.

He found himself craving it in a way he never had before, the kisses, the lingering touches, the long walks in the park holding hands. He couldn’t help it. He couldn’t help wanting things he knew Crowley couldn’t give him, and that wasn’t fair, was it? To expect love from a demon just because he’d gone and gotten his heart all tangled up in this mess? No. No, it wasn’t fair. Better to avoid the matter entirely than to find himself resenting someone for what made them who they were, so instead he wrapped himself up with his books and his sweaters and his music and he got ready to face the long, lonely centuries ahead.

When Crowley told the story—and he did, often, to anyone who would listen—he said it was in the cathedral that Aziraphale finally realized he was in love. _These Nazi spies_ , Crowley would say, _they pulled out a pistol and told him to get down on the floor. And it was there, kneeling at this altar with a loaded gun against his head, that Aziraphale finally, finally realized his true feelings, and that’s when I walked through the door._

That wasn’t what had happened. Aziraphale wasn’t on his knees, for one thing, and Crowley didn’t walk through the doors so much as pranced. But he never corrected him, never insisted Crowley tell the true story because the true story was somewhat softer, more private, and, anyhow, a lot less fun.

The true story was that Aziraphale stood in the middle of the ruined cathedral, clutching his books of prophecy that had been saved by _a little demonic miracle of my own_ , and realized for the first time that Crowley was in love with him—or, at least, that Crowley might be in love with him—or, at least, that Crowley was capable of love. Why else would he be there? Why else had he risked discorporation and consecrated ground just to bomb Nazis in the middle of the night?

Crowley’s tale grew more and more elaborate every time he spun it, but it always ended the same: _I offered him a lift home, and when he got out of the car Aziraphale said, I suppose I ought to thank you, and I said, no, better not. And then he said, well, you’d better come in for a drink then, I can’t have you catching your death of cold, and I knew right then and there that when the sun rose in the morning it would be a whole new world._

That part, at least, was true. 

**Author's Note:**

> [Come yell at me on Tumblr.](https://ineffabilum.tumblr.com/)


End file.
